Disclaimer: If I was J.K. Rowling, I would be able to think of a better disclaimer. I would also be rich. And famous. And talented. None of which I am.
A/N: Hello there, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Act Four, hope you enjoy the show--(dodges rotten tomatoes) All right! All right! I'm sorry I took so long to update! (Rodolphus and Bellatrix drag Slytherite, kicking and screaming, offstage) You haven't heard the end of this!
(crickets chirp) (audience starts to get up and leave) (Rosier and Wilkes come out onstage and address audience)
Rosier: We're quite sorry about this, really, we are.
Wilkes: It's not OUR fault.
Rosier: Miss Slytherite's writing machine was broken.
Wilkes: (eye roll) It still is, Evan. She's got two of them.
Rosier: She has? Really? Then why didn't she think of using the other one before this?
Wilkes: She's stupid.
Rosier: And she's kind of lazy.
(Slytherite gets away from Roddy and Bella (the escape was quite daring and involved three Sickles, Avery, and a Murtlap), beats up Rosier and Wilkes in a rather comical fashion, and resumes narrating her own author's note.) Yeah, that pretty much covers it. I'm planning to update at least once a week from now on, assuming Real Life doesn't decide to screw that up.
Also, I noticed that uploading the previous three chapters gave them a few formatting goofs (paragraph breaks disappearing, punctuation being removed, etc.), which I didn't notice before I posted them. If I have enough spare time, maybe I'll go through and fix them sometime. All future chapters will be examined and formatting will be repaired before I post them, to avoid any future confusion along those lines.
Now that all those pesky Real Life concerns are taken care of, we can get to the interesting part. Aren't you the lucky ones.
The Plot So Far: Bellatrix goes to Hogwarts, makes friends (sort of), makes enemies of teenage!Umbridge and Abby "Chew Toy" Paternoster, and gets sorted into Slytherin. Yes, yes, I KNOW everyone and their uncle has done that plot! Mine is distinguished by...a theatrical twist to the author's note, frequent mood whiplash, and a great deal of cruelty to the common pigeon. Hey, it's SOMETHING.
In This Chapter: A lot of delicious chow is consumed, Bellatrix and Rodolphus contemplate ripping off Umbridge's head, sundry new characters are introduced, Rita Skeeter's canonical hair color is implied to be from a bottle, and my curiosity about where the students take baths is satisfied.
Warnings: Fictional imaginary violence, fictional real violence, fictional discussion of violence, overuse of surnames, some confusion as to whether or not you can be friends with someone after knowing them for all of six hours and occasionally beating them up, bad writing in general, and a gratuitous fictional bath.
(watches audience leave in annoyance with overly long author's notes)
The feast had barely started, Dumbledore had barely made his speech that nobody had bothered to listen to, when Bellatrix started longing to get away. There were chattering students all around her, piling food onto their plates as if they hadn't eaten for months, learning names and making introductions and babbling about the stupidest, most inconsequential things. People could be so annoying, didn't they have some sense of dignity, of propriety, couldn't they just act as if they had brains in their heads? Children, that was what they were, eleven years old and still little children. Everyone was stupid. She wanted to get away so much.
"Bella?" That was the third time. He was so...intimate with her, after a day, as if he already knew everything there was to know about her. But he didn't, he never would. Thoughts about what someone might do to him someday, the sort of thoughts she knew you weren't supposed to have about your friends, flashed through her mind, softening her anger. She wouldn't hurt him...he couldn't help being slow.
"What is it NOW?"
"It's Toad Face. Down the table." How did he know--had he been reading her mind--she had never called Toad Face that out loud, had she? Had she? Oh, no, she had, hadn't she, while they were playing poker...She followed his gaze down to the end of the Slytherin table, hoping he was wrong, hoping that the stupid toad wasn't one of them. And there she was, sipping her pumpkin juice ever so daintily, her curly brown hair and shiny pink headband looking almost like mold. An idea formed itself in Bellatrix's mind. She could run down...to the end of the table...and Toad Face's throat was so exposed...blood, blood on Bellatrix's hands, blood staining the tablecloth red. She could do it...Lestrange and Avery and Rosier and Wilkes could all watch. They could take the seventh-year girls sitting with Toad Face. Rosier could have the blonde, there was only one blonde in the group and Rosier was blond too, it would be so perfectly matched. Avery was a whiner, a baby, he wouldn't want to really fight, and Wilkes was so puny, they could share the redhead. And Lestrange.
"You can have the one with the braids, the one who looks like one of Cissy's dolls--" He looked blank. For a moment, she almost thought that he didn't understand what she was thinking, where her thoughts had led, but no, he did understand, it was only a minor point he missed.
"Cissy?"
"Narcissa. My sister--you have a brother, don't you?" He almost smiled, his eyes going misty and faraway.
"Yeah. Yeah...Rabastan wanted to come. He's really little, he said he could stow away in my trunk, but Grandmother wouldn't let him. Too bad. He could've done my homework for me." Bellatrix giggled. There was something comforting about knowing that Lestrange had a family, it almost made him more human, less of a mystery. They were friends already, they would be close friends, she almost liked him, irritating as he was. After one day, she almost liked him. It was worrying, maybe she was going soft already, maybe the light and food and company were wearing down her defenses. Or maybe they would marry and have eleven children, the sort of thing Narcissa might predict, the sort of thing her family might want. She was in Slytherin, wasn't she, wasn't that enough? They wouldn't be lovers.
"If they could have fit into my trunk, my adoring parents and the rest of my wonderful family might have come, and it would be lovely and happy and sickeningly sweet and--"
Avery broke up the conversation by waving his hand between their eyes.
"Do you mind not flirting in front of us?" And of course, of course, he'd thought that there might be something romantic, after ONE day, between them, everyone might think that, denying it would just convince them of it further. Anything she said would be held against her...nothing she could do. Avery's face, bloody and mangled, swam into the space behind her eyes where her thoughts were so clear. Her hand swung out of its own accord, burying itself into his stomach, up into his ribs. The dazed look in his eyes was enough of a reward.
"I'm telling Professor Slughorn!" Oh, yes, Slughorn worked here, didn't he. The Blacks had had him over for supper occasionally, he was daft but harmless, Avery could tell tales about her all he wanted, she had charmed Slughorn with a little demonstration the last time he had been over. She had had Kreacher catch a box of spiders especially for the occasion, he had watched wide-eyed as she showed him what she could do. He was head of Slytherin House, wasn't he? Yes, he was, he would be like her father while they were there. She could see him up at the high table, he wasn't hard to miss, with that stupid walrus face. And Avery was going to tell him what she had done.
Lestrange barely seemed to move at all, his hand whipping from the table to Avery's wrist. If Bellatrix had blinked, she would have missed it, such a subtle little thing. But his hand was on Avery's wrist, gripping tighter and tighter as Avery whimpered and whined. Wilkes and Rosier were watching, even though they tried to hide it, watching with perverse interest on their faces. Bellatrix imagined the delicate bones cracking, pointed shards sticking through his skin, blood raining down onto the floor and pooling under the table, and Avery, his eyes bulging out of their sockets, going limp and falling. Such sweet thoughts, such a nice little fantasy.
Of course, she wouldn't have let it happen in real life, Avery was her friend, friends didn't do that sort of thing to one another no matter how much they longed to. She twisted onto her feet, moving closer to Avery until he shuddered, pressing her wand to his chest. Rosier took a deep and very audible breath, Wilkes prodded him and stared at Bellatrix, and Lestrange just watched them expectantly. The tone of her voice made them all shudder, even more than the words, aggressive with a sick, sisterly tinge to it. Even Bellatrix wondered what part of her it had come from.
"Jonathan," he winced as she used his first name,"you aren't going to tell Slughorn, or anyone. You aren't. Or it'll be a broken wrist, a burned chest, anything that we can do. Understand?"
"Y-yeah." Lestrange dropped Avery's wrist as soon as he squeaked out his answer. "That was a dirty trick."
"She plays to win," Wilkes agreed. Bellatrix let her face relax into a gracious smile.
"You really should know that by now." Rosier remained silent. She was sure he was thinking about her, he couldn't NOT be. His big blue eyes were out of focus, and his lips were quivering a little. The perfect portrait of the upper-class fop, all blonde curls and pretty face and nothing behind the eyes. Like a porcelain doll, like Narcissa. She was RELATED to this idiot. Sickening. "What ARE you thinking, Rosier?" He started, his eyes flicking over to her face.
"Nothing much, I'm just tired. The prefects are lining up the first years, by the way, did you notice?" No, she hadn't, she hadn't paid attention. It was time to leave. Toad Face and a nondescript boy were drawing the Slytherin first years toward them--the orange-haired Skeeter girl, Avery, a few that she couldn't place. She joined them, and they walked...
...through a door, down through a maze of stone passages, left, right, right, left, forward, past a group of Hufflepuffs, Toad Face blithering as they went.
"My name is Dolores Umbridge, and I am a seventh year, and a prefect..." Bellatrix stopped listening. What more could she say that they wouldn't know? Her name, they knew that now, in the dormitory and with teachers she would be Dolores, but inside Bellatrix's mind where the bloody thoughts lived, she would be.
"Toad Face." Umbridge turned to face her, looking shocked, her face going pale in the torchlight.
"What? What did you say, Bellatrix?" They had stopped walking; the other first years went quiet. "She knows her already," one of them muttered. Wilkes silenced her with a look--Bellatrix was grateful for that, she would thank him later, he already knew whose side he was on.
"Nothing that might interest you. But you should know, toad." She was proud enough of the words, they were good words, biting and intelligent, she would be remembered for saying that to a prefect. Even a prefect who so obviously deserved whatever she got, the other students must hate her, everyone who saw her would think the same thing. And Bella had scored a point, hadn't she? Umbridge had gone whiter than chalk, her ugly flabby face twisting into a parody of a smile.
"That is your second offense tonight, at the very least. I shall ask Professor Slughorn if any others have been reported." Paternoster. They wanted to punish her for striking Paternoster, didn't they? Stupid, stupid, stupid worthless people thinking they had any right to control her with their stupid little punishments and their slaps on the wrist. "If your poor behavior continues, I will be forced to report you, and if at all possible I shall ask about detention. Now come along." Oh Merlin, they tried so hard. It was so pathetic it was funny.
They were silent the rest of the way to the dormitory. Avery, who had threatened to report her himself at most five minutes ago, caught her eye once, and mouthed "Nice one". The hatred Umbridge inspired was that strong. How in the name of Merlin had the girl gotten to be prefect? Who would be intimidated by her? The most she did was threaten, threats were meaningless if you never intended to carry them out. Lost in her reverie, Bellatrix nearly walked into a torch when they stopped suddenly, facing a blank wall. Something magically concealed, then?
"Acromantula." Umbridge's voice had lost some of its indignant tone, instead dry and businesslike. A door slid open, a sliver of the Slytherin common room visible beyond it. Bellatrix caught a glimpse of greenish light and stone walls before Umbridge moved in front of the door, turning to face them. "Now, in a minute you will enter the room where you will spend much of your time while here at Hogwarts. Before we go in, I would like to make a few ground rules quite clear. Boys are not allowed in the girls' dormitories, without exceptions. Sexual contact is forbidden, as are indecent exposure or conversation. There is to be no interfering with the fire--if you wish to call home via fireplace, contact me or another prefect and we will make arrangements for a conversation, moderated by a prefect, of course. First years are not allowed out of the dormitories after nine, for any reason. Vandalizing the dormitory--for instance, carving the walls--is absolutely forbidden. There are two lavatories in the dungeons (take a left, another left, and a right), which we share with Hufflepuff. Towels are provided." Yes, a hot bath, that was what she needed to relax. A hot bath, alone with her thoughts, where she could close her eyes and watch the pigeons burn all over again. Comforted by the thought, she followed Umbridge through the door.
The common room was nice enough, she supposed, softly lit and furnished all in green, with rough stone walls and seven doors on either side of the room. The silent male prefect took the boys through one door, and the girls were left with toad-faced Umbridge to show them to their room. One of the older girls caught Bellatrix's eye, turned to her friend, and giggled. Bellatrix gave her a withering look, and she fell silent, although a smile was still flitting around the corners of her mouth. It was a relief to get into the room and away from her.
The first year girls' dormitory was not what Bellatrix had expected. It was trapezoid-shaped, the walls built of some dark green, glittering stone. The ebony beds were inlaid with something that looked like silver, two beds against the wall with the door and three opposite, their sheets emerald green silk. Their trunks were lying next to the beds and labeled with slips of parchment--Bellatrix had the bed to the left of the door. One of the beds had a sleek silver cat curled up on it (cats grated across her nerves). A single, silver chandelier hung from the ceiling. It wasn't a bad room, on the whole, elegant and majestic and practical enough. She would live here for nine months out of the next seven years, sleeping in this bed and working by the light of this chandelier and living with these girls. The girls might be a problem, all of them with something to prove, of course, all of them in constant competition. Well, she would have to watch her back. She could do that, could she not?
One by one, they introduced themselves, sitting on their beds and staring nervously into each other's faces, looking for some hint of weakness, something there to destroy, or maybe all but Bellatrix had let down their guard. Sometimes it was so hard to tell if people were honest or liars, stupid or playing games.
"Okay, I'll start." A beautiful girl with a strawberry-blonde braid and hazel eyes and freckles across her dainty nose. Slytherin House was known for the blood purity of its members, and blood purity often went hand in hand with stunning good looks, which were diluted almost at once when a member married a Muggle or a Mudblood. Bellatrix had read books on the subject. So the girl was probably a pure-blood. Easy enough. "I'm Juliet Coughlin." The name was unfamiliar. The girl had a slight Irish accent--perhaps she was from an old Irish family? Yes, that made sense. "My favorite color is lavender, my favorite flower is also lavender, and I've never ridden a broom." The girl with the bed opposite Bellatrix's, tall, plump, and brunette, frowned, her thin eyebrows drawing together with...what? Doubt? Confusion? People could be so hard to read.
"Blood status?" Juliet's face fell. Bellatrix's heart sank.
"Half-blood. But," she added hopefully, "my mother is from an old family! That counts, doesn't it? And I'm a nice person, really, I am!" The other girl smirked unpleasantly, her eyes meeting Bellatrix's and betraying her thoughts--'commoner, she isn't worthy of us.' Bellatrix wholeheartedly agreed. The brunette spoke next. "Evelyn Burke. Pure-blood, like the name isn't obvious enough. My great-uncle runs Borgin and Burke's, the cat is mine and her name's Magister-Smith, and," she gestured to the girl next to her, a shy-looking little waif whose brown hair probably outweighed her, "this is my niece, Agatha Jugson. Don't mess with her, she's more dangerous than she looks." Agatha looked up briefly, waved, and glanced away again. Bellatrix took the opportunity to slip her wand out of her pocket and fire sparks across the room at her. They fizzled out halfway, leaving faint ashy marks on the stone floor. Everyone looked at Bellatrix. It was her cue to speak.
"My name is Bellatrix Black. You've heard of my family, I don't doubt." She was carefully choosing her words to fit the impression she wanted to create, and it was working. They looked impressed already. "I don't have an owl at present, my parents told me they would send me the family owl every week so that I could write home, but I wouldn't be getting my own owl until I could prove I had a boy friend to write to over holidays. The usual practice." Evelyn rolled her eyes.
"Not in OUR family." Anger immediately flooded Bellatrix's mind, breaking through all pretense of politeness. How dare she condescend? To someone whose family was better, more respected, than hers?
"Oh, well, yes, I suppose your family has abandoned the traditions?" Evelyn's face turned the color of coalesced blood. Bellatrix knew the color, of course, from pigeons, pigeons she had caught and held down and splattered on the doorstep. She could feel herself itching to do it again, to render Evelyn a bloody mess. But she couldn't. Word would get out. She might be sent to Azkaban. Her family would be shamed for generations.
"You made that one up!" Evelyn and Bellatrix were both on their feet by this time, glaring into each other's eyes, wands in their hands. Juliet glanced ineffectually from one to the other, her breath shallow. Agatha was rummaging through her trunk. The one girl who hadn't yet spoken, Skeeter or whatever her name was, was listening intently. Bellatrix turned on her.
"What? What are you--what's so--GAH!" It was at that point that her fury hit its peak, strangling her and burning her and cutting off the rest of her words. She had been inching closer to losing her temper all day, her patience had slowly worn away, one little incident had finally pushed her over the edge, igniting her rage in an instant, and it was all she could do at that moment to keep from strangling Skeeter--or Rita, yes, that was her first name, it was Rita. Not that she needed to know. Her hands, her hands should be around Rita's throat, they should be, her face was burning, and she was gone, storming out of the dormitory, startling a few students in the common room as she went.
She was halfway to the bathroom before she realized she had forgotten her shampoo. She would make do with soap, she wasn't going back in there, she wasn't going to face them and give in and hurt them and be thrown out of school. She would resist. She had to. No matter how hard it was. Or her family would be shamed, she would be imprisoned, she would never be able to finish the great task she had chosen to take on. And that would be tragic.
The bathroom the Slytherin and Hufflepuff girls shared was noteworthy in several ways. First, it was built almost entirely of smooth gray stone tiles, with exceptions only for the toilets, mirrors, the soft fluffy white towels stacked in a corner, and the candles in niches in the wall. Second, there was a door next to the sinks that led into a small room with a bathtub sunk into the floor. Third, by an odd coincidence, when Bellatrix pushed open the door of the bathtub, she discovered that Abby Paternoster was already occupying it.
A/N: Wow, a cliffhanger! Admittedly, a rather silly one, but still. Where's my dramatic music, dammit? (cheery pop music begins playing) (facepalm) Never mind. (Actually, I split it here because it looked like a convenient stopping point, and I noticed that each chapter has been progressively longer. Wanted to do something about that.)
The bit about blood purity and good looks, as well as the bit about the Blacks being a better family than the Burkes, was invented by Bellatrix. And actually doesn't make that much sense if you think about it. If anything, with that much inbreeding in the "good" families, I never managed to figure out how Sirius and Bellatrix and Narcissa were all so good-looking. Maybe they had iguanas every few generations and just quietly tried to pretend it never happened. I dunno. Or maybe they just marry off the cute ones, never mind that they're utterly and completely mad?
That actually makes some sense. In a weird kind of way.
I got the idea for Juliet from reading one too many bad fanfictions. If you don't recognize the character type I'm parodying, be thankful, mkay?
Next Chapter: Confrontations in the Bathroom are Dramatic!
(reads through reviews) And now...Review Answering Time! (cheery pop music starts up again) Will somebody please turn that off? Thank you.
Sienna Rhiannon Chase: Sadistic-ness is indeed wonderful, no? Yes. It is.
kirameru1701: Paternoster was, after all, created specifically because Bella needed someone to pick on. She's the chew toy. And yes, Sorting Hat songs are a pig. A pink fuzzy pig that oinks and rolls in mud. Which kinda ruins the mood.
Sheograph: No, you don't want to know. Believe me. (Pigeons!) It's better not to know...things that Man was not meant to know. Things that Insane Preteen Girl was not meant to know, but apparently does. Things that hats were not meant to know, although pretty much EVERYTHING goes under that category. So...yeah.
tarak795: (writes down idea) Wow, we have a chapter idea! I was planning to do the occasional chapters from someone else's point of view, y'know, Voldy, Rodolphus, Narcissa, et cetera. And now a pigeon. If anyone has any chapter ideas, feel free to send them in! (thinks about bloody deaths) Well, currently several characters are already marked for death, although most of them will be dying when the war heats up near the end.
Reviews will be rewarded with fluffy white towels and an uninterrupted bath. And, of course, popcorn.
(edited because I forgot to answer the reviews. Stupid me.)
